Mercury Video Picks

Movie vampires are always mysterious and seductive--which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since vampires reproduce asexually, by biting. All that angsty, mysterious shit must be a ruse, designed to cash in on the weirdo sex fantasies of goth kids. Then again, Halloween is right around the corner, so who am I to argue with the weirdo sex fantasies of goth kids? Let the sexy vampire marathon begin!

- Interview with the Vampire (1994)--It's Brad Pitt! It's Antonio Banderas! It's Tom motherfucking Cruise! Just mentioning this melodrama gives my girlfriend an orgasm, so it's good to keep it around the house. Plus, the video version has an introduction by über-creepy author Anne Rice, who offers crappy pseudo-intellectual insights ("This movie is not just about vampires É it's really about us") and shamelessly pimps her other books.

- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)--The bastard child of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, Dawn is a clever, entertaining take on D-grade horror movies. Most notable--besides Tarantino's smart script and one of George Clooney's best performances--is Salma Hayek as the ingeniously named Santanico Pandemonium, a stripper at the Titty Twister, an even more ingeniously named bar. Ms. Pandemonium gets a whole lot less sexy, however, when she turns into a disfigured demon-vampire killing everything in sight--which, after a really awesome striptease, is kind of a downer.

- Muffy the Vampire Slayer (2003)--A Buffy-inspired porno has a plethora of possibilities: the barely-legal teen angle, abundant sexual innuendo, an orgy involving the Scooby gangÉ yet Muffy has none of the above, and is the very definition of "bait and switch." Instead of a Sunnydale sex farce, Muffy follows a detective (who's not even named Muffy, for Chrissakes) as she tracks down a lesbian vampire who's been preying on prostitutes. Oh, and the lesbian vampire comes from outer space. Yep--she can design an intergalactic spacecraft, but she can't figure out how to undo the scarring from her botched boob job. ERIK HENRIKSEN